


Oh Berlin

by Jeevey



Category: U2 (Band)
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-03
Updated: 2019-02-10
Packaged: 2019-10-21 20:39:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17649494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jeevey/pseuds/Jeevey
Summary: When I first started writing this fic six years ago I was told by someone in the fandom, "We don't write about the wives." And for the most part, we don't. But this particular fic grew out of my drive to understand the twin truths that, by all reports, however polite, the Evans marriage was deeply unhappy from the start, and that Edge was devastated when it ended. This is my attempt, and it may contain married people doing married people things. You are warned.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> When I first started writing this fic six years ago I was told by someone in the fandom, "We don't write about the wives." And for the most part, we don't. But this particular fic grew out of my drive to understand the twin truths that, by all reports, however polite, the Evans marriage was deeply unhappy from the start, and that Edge was devastated when it ended. This is my attempt, and it may contain married people doing married people things. You are warned.

Chapter 1

Edge leaned on the balcony rail and looked out over the grey rooftops of Berlin. It was freezing, but he couldn't bear the nauseating liver-colored hotel for another minute. East Berlin was a wretched city; as greyish brown as a postapocalyptic puddle, cold, and full of suspicion. They sat out here often despite the cold, avoiding the strange odor of Soviet diplomats.

“It’s over with Aislinn and me,” he said.

The bottle remained frozen at Bono’s mouth for long seconds. 

“Oh my god, Edge. She's gone?”

“It's me." Edge said. "By her request. But she’s right. The fighting is just...it’s not right." He drew a deep breath. "The girls will be with her naturally and they should have the house, so it had to be me. I took my clothes to my mother's house before coming out here. I couldn't move the guitars yet but...but they're in the music rooms so it didn't matter as much. Not like my personal things.”

“I'm so sorry, Edge. I wish I had known before.”

“Thank you.”

Edge shifted one foot to the railing. He'd never thought before coming here of what it might be like, to be unable to turn up the heat or buy warm clothing, but there was literally nothing to be had in this Soviet wasteland. He froze continually, and the damp chill worked inward and tightened his muscles in permanent defense. He traded one bulky jumper with Adam, depending on who was most miserable. He'd managed to get some woolen military stockings and cut off the toes to wear them as sleeves inside his clothes. But he found it difficult to concentrate, and his hands were stiff and slow.

“Another beer, Edge?”

“Whiskey please. I'm fucking sick of German beer, and it's so cold.” He took the square bottle pressed into his hand. Bono set his own empty bottle on a deck table full of them and cracked another.

“Is it over for certain?” he asked.

Edge held his mouthful for a moment before swallowing.

“I think it's been over for certain for... for quite a while. A long time now. I'm sorry. I know it will be hard for Ali to hear.”

“Edge, I'm so sorry. I thought that the two of you were doing better since--since L.A. It seemed to be better. Maybe this isn’t the end. Things do change sometimes. ”

“Yes,” Edge said bitterly. “Yes, they certainly do change.”

“Wait. Is there someone else already, then? I mean a real someone, not just a--” Bono's mouth hovered open.

Edge gave him a compressed look of assent.

“Someone we know?”

“She didn't want to tell me, but I imagine so. Someone local certainly.” He held the bottle against his upper lip, feeling the sweet fumes rise in his nostrils like a promise. “I can't say that I blame her. She wants a husband, someone to share her life with. Not a man who comes home a couple of times a year to rattle around the house like Father Christmas in adrenaline withdrawal. She wants...” 

He paused to light a cigarette with care, and watched his match go out against the sky. Even the sky here was indistinct mess: grey, monstrous, yawning down to swallow him. “She wants someone to raise her children with. To have others with, probably.”

Bono turned to look at him.

“Edge, those girls are yours. Nothing can change that, nobody could replace you.”

White rage shot through him like lightning, and Edge felt the deck table heave in his fingers, the heft of it as it overended in a crash of aluminum and splintered glass. 

“Is that what you think? Fucking hell, Bono! _Fucking hell._ Have you even ever _known_ anyone whose parents were divorced?” A coil of forgotten smoke streamed from the wreck of the table. "Seriously. Have you?

Bono looked down at the clattering bits. “Ehm. I guess there were the Gallagher boys down the street from me. And...Christopher Thorpe in the form below us.”

“And where were their old men?” 

Silence. 

“Come on, you can say it to me.” He turned his back and gripped the steel rail tightly, controlling the shiver in his shoulders.

Bono set his beer down with a quiet clink.

“I don't know.”

“Me fucking either. Maybe London, or a boat in the North Sea. Those kids didn't know their dads. My girls are not going to know me. I'm going to be like a rich uncle who comes to visit with presents, and everybody stands around being awkward until it's time to go back to their real lives.” His hands were searing on the frozen metal. His forearms strained against it. 

“Do you know who fathers children, Bono? It's not their actual father; he doesn't matter a fucking bit. It's the man who sleeps in their mother's bed.” He leaned heavily against the rail and dropped down to the concrete deck. There was sliding sensation on his face, like a blade before the sting is felt. He rubbed at it absently, and thought back to the fullest, the warmest moment he could recall.

 

He'd come home between legs of the Unforgettable Fire tour. Coming home was always difficult, but more now since the baby. Aislinn had a thousand different ways of handling and talking to Hollie, little routines that he could tell they did all the time. Their intimacy was overwhelming. There were little teases and bounces he didn't know how to do, ways of getting her bath or meal that he couldn't tell how to fit in to. Hollie startled as if he was a stranger whenever he touched her.

He felt shy to come back as Aislinn's husband, as well. He had an unconscious feeling that Bono might take just time to say hello to Ali between coming through the door and getting her against a wall with her knickers on the floor. Edge couldn't do that. He was proud of the work he did but it seemed irrelevant when he was home, not heroic. His way was to come back quietly, waiting for her to take him back on her own terms, uncertain ‘til then where he stood.

On this night she rose up above him, silver in the dim light. She was still a little podgy from carrying Hollie and she looked--she felt--fantastic as he clasped her thighs. He rolled up into her and she cried out, a sudden unguarded noise that immediately aroused a wail from the crib across the hall. She crossed the room in a moment, murmuring baby nonsense in a perfectly steady tone.

What a remarkably quick transition, he thought. Like a car changing gears, or a modulation of key. Like turning off the delay pedal, leaving the note resonating singular and dull. He thought of these things fixedly, and not at all of the dampness and the ache where she had been a moment ago.

Aislinn stood in the doorway, tucking her breast against against the squirmy white bundle. He heard an anxious snuffling like a tiny pig, followed by a relieved exhalation as Hollie latched on.

“Is it all right to bring her in with us?” Aislinn asked. “ She's been used to coming in with me while you were gone; it helped me to sleep.”

“Of course. Okay. Fine.” He pulled back the duvet while she climbed in, then drew it over her back while she got the baby settled. He listened to the rhythmic click of Hollie's little tongue in the dark.

Aislinn spoke softly without turning. “Come here.”

“Pardon?”

“Come over here beside me.”

“No, it's fine. I'm fine really,” he whispered.

“I'm cold from being out. Will you just put your arm around me, please?”

“Oh.” He scooted as close as he could, being careful not to let his cock touch her. She reached behind and pulled him in close.

“Aislinn, really, I'm okay.” She rocked back against him. It wasn't right to be having sexual thoughts this close to a baby. But she was so soft, and she smelled incredible. Maybe he should get up and make a cup of tea. 

“Do you want--”

“Shh.” She pushed herself back more deeply. “Come on, Edge. I need you.”

Ah, fuck it. He gave up and slid inside. God. Was he a bad person? Was his child going to be a pervert because of this? Aislinn's body was arched in a backward-sweeping curve from the heavy jut of her breasts to where her buttocks turned to meet him. Oh God, he was a terrible person and he couldn't stop. He was disoriented, turning in space, pinned to the bed by just one point of contact. His hands groped blindly in the dark.

His fingers met with Hollie's little feet, sticking out from the drawstring bottom of her nightie. She was perfectly relaxed. He could hear her mouth working busily, but the double curves of skull and spine were as limp as peas cooked in their shell. Her legs wobbled as if she was swimming. She was asleep.

She was so tiny, so precious, that his eyes stung. He drew a deep breath and steadied into a slower, firmer rhythm, gripping Aislinn by one shoulder for leverage. Moved by a sudden impulse, he captured her nearest hand and tucked it under Hollie's little bum, covered with his own. 

Ah, he'd been mistaken. This was all right, this was fine. This was his woman, his baby, his bed. His place. This was- Jesus, it was perfect. Aislinn's free hand came up to find his face. He kissed it and pushed in once more slowly, shuddering.

For a moment he lay perfectly still. Aislinn moved gently, disengaging the baby from her breast and settling more closely against his chest. He heard a tiny, satisfied sigh and then, unmistakably, a baby snore. He slid his lower arm under Aislinn's head and pulled her tight, tucking the other one more firmly around her and the baby. This was more than okay. It was all right here between his hands.

 

 

Edge opened his eyes to see a silver drop leave the end of his nose. It landed on the back of his wrist like a raindrop, leaving a cold spot. There was a shift of weight beside him: Bono working his backside down to the cold concrete, threading an arm around him.

“I'm sorry about that, with the table,” Edge said, sniffing. “That wasn't very nice.”

“Piss off," Bono gently replied. "It's fine.”

“Thank you.” 

The surface of Bono's leather jacket was like ice, but where it opened around his neck there was warmth. Edge allowed himself to shiver just once, then couldn't stop. Bono pulled him tighter. 

“Edge, Edge. It's going to be okay.”

He looked down at his hands, familiar and faintly embarrassing, broad enough at the palm but dainty at the fingertips like a girl. He had held many things in his hands: axes, awards, the handshake of luminaries and heads of state, the roar of airplanes, and just once for a moment, everything he needed. But when he turned them over now, they were empty.

He dropped his head against the open jacket and shivered again. Bono's collarbone was hard and comforting.

“I'm so cold, B.”

“Let’s go in then. It must be almost morning.” 

Morning. Edge pulled his feet in to stand. Even the blood-clotted walls of the Palace were preferable to East Berlin in the disastrous light of dawn. Bono clambered to his feet with the whiskey bottle and put down a hand for him.

“Here you go. Up. Whoops--careful there.” 

Edge stumbled. He found himself steadied against Bono's chest and two fingers of his bottle hand. He was swaying, looking down his nose at the sudden nearness of Bono's face. Near enough that Bono's inhalation rocked him slightly on his heels; so near that that the breath of his nostrils was a soft pressure on his upper lip. His lungs were filled with the scent of it. The tiny hairs nearest Bono's mouth were flushed with gold. The scent of his breath, two fingers against his chest, the tiny glinting hairs, an inhalation that swayed him slightly--

“Bono. I couldn't do it. I tried, but I couldn't be enough for her.”

Bono gave him a steady look of infinite acceptance. 

“I know you did,” he said. “Come on. Let's get you to bed.”


	2. Chapter 2

The air in the room was close and stale. Edge bent to work wearily at his boots, then slid between the chilly sheets. His chin rasped against the pillow. There was a quiet clink of bottles from the table.

“Bono. Do you think they'd send up another blanket?” 

The plastic clank of the phone, and then a pause.

“No one is answering at the front desk. I'll just see about it. Will you be all right for a bit?” He didn’t wait for an answer, and the door swiffed shut behind him.

Alone in the darkness Edge thought of his daughters. Everything that he had done in life had placed them a covered spot, a place of safety where no rough winds blew. He had made for them a shell for them, but there was no door back in. There was no place for him there. The silence grew very long. Around him spread the Palace: dull, vast, endeadening. He fingered arpeggios in the empty air. There was only silence here, and black dawn leering through the curtains. He was a singular note with no sustain and no twin harmonic, plucked and fading. He hid his hands under the pillow. The silence was gigantic, voracious.

After a time he became aware that he was no longer alone in the room. Bono bumped and rustled like an indefatigable elephant around the chairs and luggage. Edge pressed his face to the pillow, then moved to cover the wet imprint left there. He felt the light settle of a blanket over his body.

“This one is mine,” Bono said, bumping again. “There was no one at the desk to get another so I just brought it along. And this-” he produced, improbably, a cup of tea and a book. “Is it alright with you if I just crash here? It's too late to sleep now so I was just going to read for a while.”

“Sure. Hgm.” Edge's voice was uneven. He cleared this throat and tried again. “It's fine, no problem.”

Bono clambered onto the bed like a child, noisily settling himself on top of Edge's blanket and under his own. “Oh, I brought you this.” He leaned over Edge to place a water bottle on the night table. “You'll want that in the morning. Or your head will, at least. ” He thrashed pillows this way and that, propped himself against the wall and scooted close so that his leg made a line of solid warmth down Edge's back. Edge tried to relax into the feeling, but Bono continued to fidget and twitch.

“Bono. Would you please shut up and be still?”

“Right. Sorry about that.”

Now his breathing began to deepen and slow. In his imagination he walked the halls of his house. He tucked the girls into their beds and closed the shell around them, and left the room where Aislinn lay sleeping untouched. Hands were near him, moving gently. He focused on the sensation with an effort. Bono had removed the tie from his queue. He pulled it apart carefully, spreading his hair on the pillow with such delicacy that Edge's scalp prickled as though stung. Bono continued to work. He grasped careful hands full and pulled it with a steady, gently traction, moving over his whole head with a measured tug and release until the painful prickle subsided, leaving wakefulness and warmth.

Edge squeezed his eyes shut. This tenderness was more than he could stand. He tossed and shifted as if he were uncomfortable. Bono coiled his hair loosely and tucked it up on the pillow where it wouldn't cling to his neck the way Edge did himself before sleeping, and reopened his book.

“Thank you,” Edge said when he could.

“Piss off.” Bono said gently. “It’s fine.”

Edge reached back to scratch Bono's knee through the blanket, and felt a warm scrub against his shoulder in reply. Solid warmth against his back, but cold all over. He began to slide away. 

 

In his house the passage was dark, the doors all blown open and sinisterly black. He looked into one little bed and another, but they were empty. He couldn’t bring himself to turn back the blankets, to see the bare undented pillows. Edge turned stupidly, looking into all the shadowed corners where dollhouses and stacks of stuffed animals stood, but there was only silence, and a wind through open windows.

Silence, and a quiet noise that he knew. Helplessly, he followed it to the room at the end of the passage. A vast room, floors glazed with moonlight, and a bed that was not empty. She sighed again and the bed moved softly. A broad dark back moving steadily; two heads on her pillow. Edge opened his mouth. The pain was searing cold in his chest, in his hands and throat. Her eyes opened, fixed on him without blinking. She looked at him a long time without changing expression, her body rocking with the motion of shadowy shoulders. Then her eyes went blank and she turned, whispering to the unknown man inside her. Edge stood alone on the cold vast floor, forgotten.

 

Pain in his throat, and a high tight noise he didn’t recognize. Confusion. Where? Why was it so cold? A shifting on the bed roused him.

“Shh. Shh. Edge, it’s okay, you’re all right.” 

Edge made a futile effort to suppress the sob in his chest. Bono wriggled down behind him, wrapped one arm around his front. Edge took a ragged breath.

“You’re not alone.” Bono’s breath touched his ear. “You’re not alone. Edge, don’t cry.” 

“I’m sorry. I just--I don’t know what to do. Everything is gone. I tried, Bono. I thought I tried, and yet everything...a man living in my house, oh my god.” Edge buried his face in his pillow and let his body heave with retching sobs. 

At last he stilled, exhausted. There was a firm arm around him, warmth at his back, a continuous comforting murmur like someone soothing an animal or a child. A hand began to stroke gently just over his solar plexus. 

The body behind him was so unreasonably warm, Edge felt himself relaxing for the first time in months. Months, it had been months since anyone touched him. The soft breath shushing in his ear, the absolute stillness all around. A trace of familiarity and warmth in a strange cold place, a chest rising and falling behind him, a band of life around his body. Edge cleared his throat.

“I need you to let go now.”

“No.”

“I mean it, Bono. I’m not--I’m not used to having somebody near me like this anymore.” 

The hand firmed over his chest as Bono wriggled closer. He whispered, “I can’t stand to see you like this, Edge. It’s killing me. Not just right now but every day, going in and out of the studio. You wouldn't tell me but I knew, I knew. Your face, so alone. I can’t take it. The days when you hear nothing from the girls are awful, but when you have to call her to talk to them it’s even worse. I’m so sorry about this, Edge, so sorry.” His voice began to resolve into warmth like small kisses on the back of Edge’s neck. 

Openmouthed with stupefaction, Edge gazed into the dimness. Bono’s mouth was unspeakably soft, pressing hot spots onto his skin that quickly cooled and stung to be warmed again. His neck twisted involuntarily in response to the unaccustomed prickles that ran all over his body, an opportunity which Bono took to bury his face more deeply, mouthing and rubbing his harsh chin over newly awakened skin. Edge gasped. The hand continued to lightly stroke his chest. Edge struggled to marshal his thoughts.

“Bono--what. This is--hgmh. I-- I think you should--”

“Do the other side? Good idea, the Edge. Lift your head.”

Edge recognized the grin in Bono’s voice and huffed with exasperation even in the midst of his confusion. “No, I’m serious! I just, oh god, I don’t think you should do that.”

“Who else, Edge?" The voice in the dark turned deeper. "Who else is going to do this for you? Who else loves you like I do, is going to be safe for you? One of die Huren in the lobby there? You can’t go on alone like this. You need... you need.” His mouth was moving up into Edge’s hairline. His hand touched his chin, surprisingly delicate for all its clumsy shape, and turned his face to the side. Small kisses being to make their way behind his ear. 

“I’m not taking advantage, Edge. I don’t need anything back. Just for a few minutes, be happy. Please. Think of her, think of anything, and just let me.”

There was a thing Edge needed to remember, some kind of reasonable objection to this torturous comfort. Yes, there it was. 

"Ali.”

“Ali loves you. If she were here right now I’d make her do it myself,” Bono growled.

Edge shivered. He was still cold and confused from his dream, and the places that Bono touched felt warm and real. Irresistibly he began to relax. Bono’s hands began to soften and spread, one rubbing widening circles over his abdomen and the other moving to knead his shoulder. Edge sighed.

“That’s good. Just let me do this for you. You’re so good, Edge. I was proud of you in the studio today. I love the new sounds you were doing. It’s going to come together really soon, I know it will....” The soft voice continued to murmur nonsense as the neck of his shirt was tugged lower to allow new kisses. The circling hand began to brush lower.

“Bono, I don’t know if I can."

“Shh. You can. Just think. Where do you want to be right now?”

“Home. I want to be home.”

“We’re at home then. Close your eyes. What color is your room?”

“White. Kind of a yellowy white.”

“And the bed?”

“Same.”

“Sheets?” 

“Purplish. Like--mm--like wine.”

Bono chuckled. “I like your style, Edge. I I may have to join you here.”

“Christ. Just shut up, Bono.” 

“Okay, Edge, I'm sorry. You’re home in the white bed, throbbing purple on the inside. Her hair is dark, that’s handy now. So beautiful. And she smells like...?”

“Coco.”

“Mmm. Coco on that ivory skin, so soft. And you, you smell like...” Bono ran his nose over Edge’s skin, inhaling. “Marlboros. Soviet bath soap. Expensive deodorant, a little sweat. You’ve been working very hard, Edge.”

“Yeah.” 

“And she’s very soft, and the babies are all asleep. And she wants you. She's been missing you all this time." Bono's speaking lips moved lightly against his skin; it could have been anyone, any moist breath, it could have been her.

Her luminous skin, marked by the bearing of his children. The tracing of her nose on his body, just like this. Her mouth so delicate, and herself so small. He leaned his shoulders back and began to expose himself to her explorations. And she wanted him now; he could feel it in the heave of her chest, the tremble in her breath her as it moved across his neck. His children were asleep across the hall, and she loved him.

"What does she like to do for you?" came a murmured question.

"I... here." He indicated his chest and sighed as she began to nudge and kiss. He began to stroke her hair, heavier and straighter than he remembered and somehow darker to the touch. It wasn't often that she touched him with such affection, such care. What strange intimacy with this, as she buried her nose in his armpit and simply breathed?

"You smell so good, Edge."

He felt a surge of unexpected adrenaline at this whisper, this proof.

She nudged insistently at his arm. Hesitantly he raised it, allowing her head there and her hands, her hands, as they grazed his chest and stomach, drifting softly...a soft and dangerous line to walk. Sometimes he had enjoyed it too much, had believed that she loved him truly, that she would not rise afterward with a laugh or sarcastic silence. He needed to keep her patience, and it was so hard when she teased him like this, when she made him believe.

His eyes flicked down to the shadowy shape that touched him. Cream-white neck and dark hair; was it so different, after all? Bono's hands were heavier than hers and hot, so hot, but why was he being so gentle? 

He was being generous; it was distaste, not affection, Edge reminded himself. There were no soft breasts or full hips for him to hold onto, just Edge's own skinny body scoured with black hair. He didn't want anything for himself, Bono had said. He ought to keep his distance and just...just enjoy that, that what Bono was doing right now. He ought to lie still and not touch that coil of hair spilled across his chest: think of how she used to roll her hips as hungrily as Bono was doing now and how she used to mouth his neck and jaw just like this, except that she never, never had. He ought to remember this was charity, and forget--dear god--forget for a moment that no one really....

He tossed restlessly.

"Bono!" The shadow ceased to move. "Tell me...tell me this isn't pity."

"It isn't. Edge, I'd never." 

"You don't have to do this. I don't want you to be sorry after, just because I'm, I'm--" He couldn't say. To be trembling with want for a man, for god's sake--could he not even get a woman? 

Yet Bono was whispering silly disjointed things, and the hands which were still on him resumed their travels.

"B. We can't be sorry after, not with the way things are right now. I just--ngh."

Why was he so worried? Did it even matter? He caught murmured words like nice chin, and have to hold you, and began to stroke the smooth black strands. The blocky hands were heavy and hot, but so knowing. The shadows seemed to play with his disbelief and confusion--it was her own milky skin which seemed to glow in the darkness, yet the shoulders were strangely broad, and dotted with freckles. So broad, and every time they moved the world seemed to heave; nothing could be more different to her faery delicacy. But the head was warm and heavy, and he grasped it by the hair and began to direct it to all the unkissed parts of his body.

Bono’s teeth found his nipple, and he blushed at the sudden thought of Ali’s flawless skin, to which Bono must be comparing him right now.

“Don't, B--hair in your teeth,” he whispered. In answer Bono rubbed his face in it hard and bit him again. Edge’s hand moved to the captivating darkness of Bono’s mouth, the lean cheek and fierce jaw, and its miraculous contact with his own skin. The back of his neck was warm and solid and there was something--something incredible, Christ, about those shoulders, which rolled and hunched above him like a monstrous shadow.

Bono’s arms had wrapped around his thighs some time ago, and Edge realized now that he cradled his hips in either hand, that his chest was pressed thirstily to the front of Edge’s jeans, that the roll of his hips in the air were punctuated by the most ungodly sighs. But that wasn’t right. He was doing a friendly favor, he couldn’t be enjoying--

Some little thing caused him to arch and groan, and his legs to close around Bono’s body, which pressed him down like a wave. That scrapper’s little body was heavy between his thighs and not at all distasteful; he was hot and solid like a furnace and he--

Bono moaned. 

“Edge, oh my god. I can’t believe you. You incredible-- I want--.” The words were without sense against his skin, and he couldn’t understand any of what was happening.

“Bono,: he said. "Will you--ah--will you just. God. Shh.”

He found himself hastily removed from his clothes, and the blankets settled over them like an engulfing shadow. And then there was a bare body pressed against his own, and the scent of a man was really not bad at all, it hot and dark and terribly, terribly familiar, if the ground itself had risen up to cover him with fiery kisses. Edge himself had lately become a miracle, and allowed himself to be explored as patiently as he could while groaning for the harsh hips against his own, the fierce and heavy body, and the strange insistent kisses of a man. Cool threads of of air entered the blanket as they thrashed, but he wasn’t cold at all anymore, he was on fire, and the world had ceased to exist.

Afterward, after Edge discovered that he could laugh--could laugh in stunned disbelief at how predictably abandoned and lascivious were the sounds of Bono in climax, and how astonishingly familiar was the sound of his own name moaned in ecstasy--and after they both seemed to pass through a little period of unconsciousness, Bono resumed his elephantic toss and shuffle. Edge stared as his dim form busied itself with a series of surreally homely tasks. There was water for both of them, a pillow returned to Edge’s head from the floor. There were blankets tucked around his shoulders, the phone removed from its cradle with a thunk.

“Bono,” he said at last. “Can you please be still.” 

Bono smiled to himself as he thrashed once time, then gestured toward the steeple of East German pillows he had made. Edge watched as Bono lay down upon it, and allowed himself to be drawn against his chest like a child. It smelled like sweat, tobacco, and dressing rooms, like sweat and sex and kisses. He traced the constellated freckles of Bono’s skin, and together they watched the light seep in like water, and the iron-grey curtains held back Berlin like a wall.

**Author's Note:**

> Oh Berlin  
> Who could think they would find you by just looking  
> Oh Berlin  
> How many of us hide in you  
> Oh Berlin  
> To think I could know you by your name 
> 
> To stare and not be stared  
> To look and not be seen  
> To feel new feelings  
> Rather than understand where you've just been 
> 
> Oh Berlin  
> Who could they would find you by just looking  
> Oh Berlin  
> When you flap your angel wings  
> Oh Berlin  
> To think that I could know you by your name


End file.
